So what would you do if you were a Labour minister?

Boss Man d’Ancona asks us to consider what we would think and what we would do were we Labour MPs. A scary thought, I know but that’s the point of the exercise. For myself, I like to think I’d agree with Tom Harris. That is, if I were a Labour backbencher I’d be very concerned about my employment prospects and would welcome pretty much Anyone But Gordon as leader. How much worse could any alternative leader be?

But if I were a member of the cabinet and someone who had leadership ambitions myself, I might see matters rather differently and conclude that while Labour would certainly be well-served by a change in leadership the times are sufficiently inauspicious to justify sitting still and keeping very, very quiet for a little longer yet. True, this means that a chronically unpopular Prime Minister whose led his party to its worst national result in more than 80 ears will have to remain in place, but that’s the price the country must pay for my ambition.